A Beginner's Guide to Copyediting | Part Two

In the last part of this series, we talked about the general parameters of copyediting as a job, style guides, and a little bit on freelancing. If you haven't read that part, check it out here: A Beginner's Guide to Copyediting | Part One

This time, we're going to talk about copyediting marks and when/how to query an author during copyediting. This post is a lot more practical in its application, and these are the skills that you'll be using to actually edit.

Now, it must be said, copyediting marks are only used if the publishing house you're working for still edits with physical manuscripts. If it is digital, there will be other protocols for editing that can include anything from using track changes on Microsoft Word, using the commenting feature on Adobe Acrobat, and commenting or suggesting on Google Docs. That will be specified by the house upon hiring, and when doing that, you just make the necessary changes using the specified tool. Any time you want to query, you'll just add it as a comment.

This displays track changes in Microsoft Word.

So what is querying? Querying is an important part of copyediting, because it is communicating through worded comments rather than copyediting marks that typically concern things like tone, voice, logic, or fact versus fable.

Let's break that down a little bit further. Say you're reading a piece that is written conversationally for a magazine that has a light tone and talks about culture and entertainment in real-time. Everything is in line, and then there is a sentence with high vocabulary and cultural theory that sounds stilted compared to the rest of the piece. In that situation, you might have ideas of words and expressions that would better communicate the meaning of the sentence without affecting the tone. But, your job is to edit, not to write the article, so rather than making the change with copyediting marks, you would query something along the lines of "These ideas come across as a little bit elevated as is. Perhaps use the words..." and then insert your suggestion.

It's important that you explain why you think it might be a problem, and it's also important that you phrase your query in a way that makes it seem collaborative rather than harsh. An author who feels that their work is being attacked won't react well, and that could lead to them complaining to your employer, making business harder, or simply rejecting the edits because of wounded egos. This is never an easy line to toe, however it is a really important thing to be aware of.

Beyond tone or vocabulary, you'll typically want to query something that reads as illogical. This would be working more on a novel where there is supposed to be a logic to the world, plot, etc. or on a more academic piece. If a conclusion is made, or something happens that doesn't follow the logic of the rest of the piece, it is your job to point that out.

A query on something like this would be a little bit more questioning in nature. You can add suggestions of what you think would make more sense, but your main objective here would be to ask the author the questions you have about the logic. When going through and approving edits, they can read where the confusion is and make the necessary changes, or add a sentence substantiating the jump in logic. Either way, this is very important for author credibility.

Sometimes when fact checking, something is undeniable (like the date that a world war started). Other times, however, there are things that you cannot corroborate with your information like the spelling of a person's name or a description of an old town. You'll need to query this outright rather to bring it to the attention of the author.

Here, the key is to not overdo it. If you know for a fact something is wrong, simply change it with a deletion mark and a caret. Only query when you suspect something is incorrect, or you tried and cannot find the information online.

For any of the queries, the comment should be written with the mark "Q:" or "Qu:" preceding the comment in the margins of the text. This looks the same digitally and in print.

Now, for the rest of copyediting marks, what do they look like?

Here's a handy sheet:

These are pretty standard across the publishing industry. You'll use these within the actual text to communicate what needs to change. If the author approves these edits, these marks will be sent to a typesetter to make the necessary changes, so it's imperative that they're accurate and very clearly written.

The only thing that won't go directly in the text is something like "stet," which as you see is circled. Any word/abbreviation that is written out and circled goes in the margin next to the line where the change is being made.

To indicate what copyedit you are reversing, you would just put ..... under the word that was edited with the "stet" in the margin.

What I want to end this post with is a reiteration of my earlier point about how to address the author. In any query, email, or author letter in which you are making changes, you have to keep the tone cordial and respectful.

But you also have to ensure that it doesn't become overly reverent. You can compliment where things are done very well, but your job is not to boost the author's ego. Do not shower them in compliments, or try to be overly nice before you make an edit so that it is received well. Simply ensure that you are suggesting and being collaborative.

In other words, you don't want to say, "This word makes you sound pretentious, change it," but you also don't want to go too far the other way with something like: "You're vocabulary is stunning and it's so impressive how smart you are, but I think here a different word could work."

You want the sweet spot in between there. Something closer to: "As is, the sentence makes sense, but to keep the tone of the magazine and the piece, you might want to consider using a different word such as..."

That way, you are being respectful, but still getting your change across without going too far in either direction.

All of this being said, this is the true meat and potatoes of copyediting. What you'll spend most of your time doing is using these marks and queries to make the changes, and sometimes you'll compile a letter after the fact detailing what you did and some larger changes that the author could consider making that you didn't mark.

Being well-versed in these marks and in this communicative style is imperative for any successful copyeditor.

In the next part of this series, I'll dive into proofreading, some of the trickier grammatical topics such as who/whom, number formatting with different style manuals, and how to make your own personal style sheets. It will be out Monday, April 6, 2020 at noon!

Make sure to leave a comment if you have any further questions, I'm always around to help!

"Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood" by Sarah J. Maas | Book Review

*This review contains spoilers*

As somebody who has read every other Sarah J. Maas book, I think Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood is the craziest one yet.

Set in Maas' sprawling new world, a city quite like our own world with some fantastical tuneups, Bryce Quinnlan navigates the tricky waters of love, loss, corruption, and deceit. As a young twenty-three year old, working all day and partying all night, Bryce comes to us with a sharp mouth, a quick mind, and one goal: to spend as much time as she can with her best friend, Danika Fendyr.

All of that changes when, late one night, stumbling home from a club with multiple drugs in her system, Bryce pushes open her apartment door to find Danika and her pack of wolves savagely murdered.

It's clear that, since this is Maas' first official adult novel, she was given the go-ahead to talk about some topics that she previously couldn't, such as drinking, drugs, more sex (but we'll talk about that later), and cursing. The first twenty or thirty pages were an adjustment for me in a similar way that The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling seemed to affect people. It's as if, because the floodgates were open, all those years of pent-up curse words and bar scenes tumbled out.

And at first, I was a little bit frustrated, worried that Maas would suffer a similar affliction to Rowling, but after about a hundred pages, once the plot properly began to pick up, she seemed to even back out into her old rhythm of things, incorporating those things where they were believable rather than wherever she could.

Now, let's talk about world building. I'll admit, this book wasn't my favorite for a long while. I actually debated DNF-ing it because the beginning of this book was slow. The world Maas created is fascinating, a breeding ground for all kinds of creatures. Mer-people and humans, Fae and shape-shifters, wolves and archangels all co-existing.

But the first fifty pages felt like a deluge of information. Like every other paragraph was explaining something new about the world, how different things functioned within it without showing that to us. It almost became too much at once, like reading a world handbook rather than the actual story. And to be frank, I found most of those explanations went over my head, and I really understood things once we saw the city functioning in action.

Perhaps that's why the first fifth of the story just didn't pull me in, but I found myself really unsure if this was going anywhere that I was interested. Bryce, though fun, felt like another iteration of Maas' other two main characters, and when we met the brooding Umbra Mortis who would be watching her as they strove to discover two years later who had killed Danika and her pack, I knew he was Rhys or Rowan incarnate.

But once the story picked up, Maas drew me in. What she does, even if the characters aren't entirely new, is fantastic character work. Between dialogue and habits, she creates characters that feel undoubtedly real, for whom you have to sympathize with.

Bryce being a half-Fae with near-negligible power, so little that her father refuses to recognize her in a world where being a half-breed gets you called just that, you have to feel sorry for her. She's lost her best friend and is clearly struggling with that. And you have Hunt, who's a slave that is forced to kill, tormented all these years later by a lost love, slaughtered at her sisters hands.

The characters are so sympathetic that watching them heal one another slowly is something you want to stick around for.

But once the plot really got going, that was nothing to shy away from either. My favorite genre is crime, and so finding out that this book was practically fantasy-crime made me feel electric.

The clues were laid perfectly. I'll admit, some of them I saw coming, or had an inkling. With the incessant reference to Bryce being nothing more than a half-Fae, not blessed with any power, a deep part of me promised that that was not true. However, I never expected her to hold Fae light within her, to make the drop solo and plummet so deep into power. I didn't once predict that the horn was inscribed on her back in that tattoo, and I definitely didn't see that Micha was behind all of the killings.

The last two or three hundred pages were breakneck, hurtling to an end that felt inevitable, but was set back so many times by complications, you had to wonder if it would truly come to fruition.

An unexpectedly tender and emotional moment happened toward the end, when all of the Summit is watching Bryce face off with Micah on the big screen and Lehabah—who, though I didn't love towards the beginning, really grew on me—sacrifices herself for Bryce after being freed. It was brief, not entirely new, but so emotional and so essential that I couldn't help but love it.

The reveals of this plot were done expertly, and they really made the end of the book feel worthwhile.

Many of the things that went down here tied into the different species hierarchies in this world, and I found that to be done very tastefully. The way Fae looked down on half-Fae, and all of the Vanir looked down on humans, with archangels and angels brooding above the rest. It added a nice flavor of reality to this book, where so much of it is fantastical. Our society is layered with hierarchies and gates for those who do not qualify, and I liked seeing Maas tackle something so head on.

All of that being said, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about a few of the things I didn't love.

The characters all felt like new iterations of the same people Maas has always written. The men are possessive, brooding, and though everyone in the world thinks they're killing machines, they're all soft and cuddly at their heart. The women are all biting, irreverent, and take any chance they get to call the "alpha" men on their "alpha" bullshit.

And every single one of them are, per usual, stunning, gifted with unnatural beauty and perfect bodies.

I'm never really a huge fan of sex in fantasy books unless there is purpose to it. A sexual scene can elevate the plot if it's with someone unexpected, if it has either huge negative or positive implications, if it shows cheating or reveals a character's sleight of hand. There are a lot of ways to spin this. But Maas has always written uncomfortably detailed, way-too-long sex scenes that are smut for the point of smut.

That works for some people, for me I just don't need it. All of the masculine words and the mixing of scents and things just aren't interesting to me. Her strength is world and character building and big reveals we didn't see coming, so I wish sometimes she could just cut some of the sex scenes out. If anything, though, I still felt like this book was less smutty than A Court of Mist and Fury, which is a win in my book.

Overall, the beginning started out slow and a little bit rocky for me, but as the plot picked up and the characters deepened, I found myself engrossed, reading the last three hundred pages in practically one sitting. Maas created a series with massive potential as it goes on, this book clocking in as one of her best plot- and setting-wise.



Characters: 95%
Plot: 98%
Depth: 90%
Intrigue: 90%
Style: 80%
Overall: A-

"Kingdom Of Ash" | Sarah J. Maas

I'm writing this review far in hindsight, so some of the details might be vague and some of the feelings muddled, but boy do I have a lot to say about this novel.

"Kingdom of Ash" is the seventh and final novel in Sarah J. Maas' popular "Throne of Glass" series, and it tells the story of Aelin and her friends as they embark in the final war against the dark forces that threatened them and their world. I won't go into much more detail, for it would get far too complex and take up the entire page just trying to explain each and every plotline.

Going into this, I was a little bit wary, as I liked A Court of War and Ruin—the only other novel we have from Maas that ended a series, but I found myself with lingering dissatisfaction when I thought of the novel. I wasn't sure how she would end this series, but I was unsure if she could do it well; everything seemed so scattered, too many loose ends flailing too far from one another, and her track record not incredible in my opinion.

To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement.

On the whole, I was very happy with this novel. Despite being nearly a whopping 1,000 pages, I didn't feel like I was drowning in pagecount while I read the novel, and between following Aelin's terrible journey in the hands of Maeve, to seeing reunions of characters who'd been long separated, to watching the epic final battle, I felt engrossed for the most of the time.

To keep it simple, I was satisfied with the loose ends Maas tied up, the ending a tear-jerker, though a bit dragged out if you ask me. A good chunk of the novel was dedicated to the final battle, which I really appreciated (particularly as a reader who has read too many novels that shove the climactic scenes into thirty pages and call it a day), and some of the revelations made in this novel tied back to details laid out early in the series, which I adored.

However, I think the truth of it is, Maas was juggling a few too many point of views and storylines. Though I think she did the best she could, and don't get me wrong, her writing was good in this novel, however we were split into so many points of view across so many parts of the world that I found myself confused or at times wondering about other characters. We had Aelin being locked away with Maeve and Rowan on his search through the continents to find her, Aedion and Lysandra fighting battles away from the rest of the characters, Yrene and Chaol sailing back from the Southern continent and then returning to Chaol's home, Dorian and the Thirteen hunting for the Crochan witches, and that is just a summary, leaving out a lot of other main characters who had perspectives in the same settings as some of the above listed. Any author, no matter how skilled, would have trouble juggling so many different settings and characters and storylines, and the thing I think I felt the most while reading this novel was wonder about the other character's whereabouts.

Though I loved the scene where they all met in the end, it felt tiring at times to switch to another point of view in another setting and try to remember what had been happening with them. There were times where I felt confused about who was where, or lacking backstory or depth to some of the short snippets we got. And those shortcomings are inevitable with any novel trying to deal with so many different storylines at once, however it was frustrating to get brief glimpses of Chaol and Yrene—who I had grown to love after "Tower of Dawn"—interspersed, or to get a random point of view from Lysandra that didn't seem to contribute too much, where I spent more time trying to remember where and who she and the army were fighting than I did paying attention to what was happening.

All of that being said, I do think the character arcs in this novel were done brilliantly, and I found myself barely resenting Aelin and Rowan, a big step up from where I left on in Empire of Storms. Their love felt more deep, their bond feeling realistic and mature in this novel, a big step outside of what they'd been in past installments. Watching Dorian grow as a character, develop a willingness to sacrifice himself for his people and his country, and grow into the King he was meant to be was a pleasure, and Maas wielded him beautifully. The scenes in Morath with him were perfect, just what I needed leading up to his reunion with the rest of the characters and the final battle.

Reading the scene where the Thirteen sacrifice themselves was absolutely heart-shattering, the description of the loss Manon felt after that and the pain that the whole army seemed to suffer in awe of their death was done so well I practically felt like I lost people myself.

There were so many moments of this novel that were beautiful, Maas flowery writing shining through with a couple lines that I know will stay with me for a long time.

And at its heart, this is a novel about dreamers, people willing to fight tooth and blood and sacrifice themselves for these dreams, for a world that was better than the one they'd been born into. And at its heart, I think I could never hate a book with those themes because they resonate so deeply with me.

To end this review, I'll leave you with a quote that embodies what I just described.

"There's a better world out there, and I have seen it."

~~

Characters: 85%

Plot: 90%
Depth: 85%
Style: 90%
Intrigue: 95%
Overall Rating: B+

The Power of Words

As someone who spends a lot of their time immersed in the world of words, sometimes I lose a grip on why I love it so much. It's not that I lose hope in words, or that I fall out of love with language, it's that I become so blind to what I'm doing and so exhausted from constant work, that sometimes I forget about the spark that ignites in me whenever I read or write.

Now, from being in this community for a long time, I know that's not particularly uncommon. And frankly, we all need breaks from things we do a lot, even if we love them. Hence reading slumps, writer's block, etc. But sometimes, after long months of being uninspired, in rare moments when the cosmos seem to bleed together and brew the perfect moment, you're reminded just of why words are so powerful.

For me this happened a few weeks ago. It was a grey day, the first chill of autumn creeping into the air. I'd been slowly chugging my way through "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert, and on this day I was possessed by an inexplicable desire to devour it. So I sat down in a free hour I had and sped through the ending of the book. Upon finishing it, my eyes were wide, my heart was pounding, and every thought of mine was refocused back to writing.

It had been a long time since I'd been so inspired. Her writing is beautiful, of course, and her metaphors are masterful, but she also has that magic that she writes about. Her words carry with them a preternatural ability to move you, to get you out of your worries and fears and onto the computer to get writing, or acting, or whatever it is you love and want to pursue.

As she urged the reader, "So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes," I felt electric, like I'd been struck with the brilliance and the magic of the world upon which us writers and readers operate.

But I couldn't sit and stew on this moment. I couldn't revel in the energy that coursed through me, or jump on the train of adrenaline that was making my fingers itch to write. I'd bought tickets to see Porsha Olayiwola perform "Black and Ugly As Ever," and it was time for me to leave.

So, still radiating the creativity that Gilbert had instilled, I hopped on the train and shot over to see Olayiwola's performance. And needless to say, it was incredible. As she whisked us through her life, her experiences, and the flaws in our culture, I felt that energy in me heightening. It didn't fizzle, or drain out as sometimes happens when you let it sit. Instead, it grew, multiplying and spawning something I hadn't felt in a long time.

As Olayiwola stood before a crammed club and bellowed, "I'm so black I'm not alive, just not buried yet" and "Every time I twirled my afro out, I knew I was some kind of rebellion," I felt the energy in the room crackling.

My world was flowing and ebbing, the fibers of my brain coming undone and forging themselves anew. See, it is rare moments like that where the power of words becomes so apparent, so intense that it overwhelms you, that it seems to beat in every breath in the sweaty room, seems to twine with the stars and sing in the streets. It is not every day that you feel so intensely, so powerfully about how much words mean and the command they hold. Experiences like those are fleeting, blessings in a way. And I couldn't be more grateful.

You see, I was in a slump, dawdling in an unmotivated state. I hadn't written in weeks, I was barely getting through novels. I felt like I was drowning in work, and the world was starting to look more and more bland.

But words are more powerful than that. They are sometimes wretched and cruel, but they are powerful. And when you need them most, they sweep through and remind you just why you love them so much.

So if you are in the position I was in just a few weeks ago—feeling uninspired, not good enough, lost, or dazed—then let this be my beckon to you. Re-immerse yourself in the world of words. Don't give up, don't lose yourself now.

Keep chipping away at that novel you're reading, write a little bit every day, even if you have to gut the words out of yourself. Because I promise, you'll get your moment as well. You won't be uninspired forever.

As long as you keep trying, inspiration will strike again, and you'll remember awe-inspiring power of words for whatever reason it was.

And once they do, you'll be unstoppable.

Naming Your Character

Whether we realize it or not, names in literature are incredibly important.

In real life, our names aren't our choices, and they are often arbitrary choices, or a name that meant a lot to your parents, but very rarely do they have meaning beyond that.

For the most part, this is false in literature. Sure, tons of names of characters were taken from baby name lists, but often times names give glimpses into a character, or has a deep meaning to the character in question. There are times when you'll really want to sweat your name. I'm going to talk about how to find that name with a huge meaning, or figuring out the name that foreshadows a bit plot event, but also how to find the less important names, or names that are just names.

If you want your name to be intertwined with the story, or show things about the character, then you'll have to get creative.

There are plenty of examples of names where authors picked them because they directly reference an aspect of the character of the plot, or because the names feel like the character's personality trait. As an author, you have the wonderful ability to get to know your character before naming them if you so choose.

This is done very well in Carson McCullers's, The Heart Is a Lone Hunter. Here, there's the name Antonapoulos, which greatly reflects the character's finicky or persnickety nature. Then, you also have Singer, a name which really nicely shows simplicity, and a more tranquil nature. These names were chosen because they feel like and show the characters.

So try a couple names out. See which one feels best, because a lot of times for authors the name has to feel right for the character as they're writing it. 

If a character is very complex, or intelligent, name them accordingly; picking something like Solange or Cassiopeia will reflect this complex component, and it a hell of a lot more interesting to read than Sam or Joe.

Another technique you could use is a find a word that means something that your character does. This is best exemplified by Salinger's, The Catcher in the Rye. Now, this isn't my favorite book in the world, I can tell you that much, but one thing that Salinger does brilliantly is name our main character Holden. Holden, with the word "hold" directly in it, is so perfect because the entire story what Holden is doing is holding (get it?) onto things—the past, people, concepts, innocence. This name shows us how this character will act.

Another example of this is in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. J.K. Rowling, like everything else about this series, picked her names quite appropriately. This is the novel where Dolores Umbridge is introduced. While the word isn't spelled correctly—a choice you as an author can make—umbrage means an offense or an annoyance, which perfectly foreshadows just how her character will be.

On the topic of J.K. Rowling, she also named the antagonist of the series Voldemort. While not meaningful on first glance, any of you who speak French will know this name actually tells us just what Voldemort's goal is; in just one name, J.K. Rowling foreshadowed his goal and the majority of the plot in the later half of the series. Voldemort, broken into the words "vol de mort" translates to "flight of death." This showed his desire, as well as indicated everything we later learned about Horcruxes.

So if you want your name to mean something directly, put a significant descriptor of the character in the name, or change the spelling of a word, or turn an expression from a different language into a name—these will all increase the meaning of a name and give readers a connection to the character they wouldn't have otherwise had.

The last thing I wanted to talk about isn't as common in literature, but it's still an option if you're creating a character. You can have character's go nameless. If overused, this device becomes tiring and almost pretentious, but if used sparingly, you can create a great atmosphere of ambiguity and mystery, or it can separate the reader from the characters, which is sometimes a really interesting reading experience.

Now, if you have a couple irrelevant characters who waltz into a few scenes but aren't there to stay, or play an impactful role., you can always use babynames.com. That site, or sites like it will give you a wealth of names to choose, but I wouldn't recommend doing that for your main character.

A name can be all you use to characterize someone, so assign them carefully.

Chekhov's Gun

This post deals more with the technicalities of writing, and I would consider it to describe a strategy for analyzing descriptions in the story, and truly looking at whether or not you are being superfluous in description.

Chekhov's Gun is essentially the principle that the details and memorable elements to the story must be purposeful, or have a role later in the story. In his words, "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The reason I think this is worth talking about, and a genuinely good rule to follow is it enhances your story in that it is more engaging.

If every detail or element to the story ultimately has a purpose, your readers will forever be guessing at how everything will tie together, and it will cause them to scour the book's details and mentions for clues at what will happen next.

This is huge to keep people not just flipping from one page to the next, but genuinely captured by the story.

In practice, I think this is also a really fantastic way to cut down your word count in editing should you find yourself with one that's too large. It will force you to weed out that which you don't need, and leave you a story that is tight and interactive, and would likely help to clean up some of the writing or even bits of the plot.

Now, this isn't to say you shouldn't describe anything unless every word in the description has a meaning later, but it is a good way to look at symbols or objects and what role they could play. Again, describing someone's features, or building the word is vital to the story, so you can't take it out solely on the principle it's not coming back as part of the plot, but it is a cool device to use with objects or concepts that you know will be part of your plot later in the novel.

"Where Things Come Back" | Book Review

**Includes spoilers**

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I finished "Where Things Come Back" by John Whaley, and I have to say I didn't have many expectations coming into this book. And I have to admit, I was pretty satisfied with the end of the book.

We begin our story in Lily, Arkansas, following seventeen-year-old, Cullen Witter. I have to admit, at the beginning, I was worried I would only find this book average, because Cullen is just that: average. Yes, I related to him because his sort of outside qualities in a mainstream world, and his love for writing, but he just seemed to be your average, slightly whiny teenager. As the plot progresses, Gabriel, Cullen's brother mysteriously disappears.

This is the point where I grew more interested. Personally, I've read my share of love and loss stories, but his close relationship with his brother enhanced this one particularly. The reader begins to feel for Cullen because his ties with his brother are so strong—in other words, Whaley has made the reader fully understand why Cullen feels the way he does, and we begin to feel it ourselves. It was here when his character got interesting to me. It was here that I began to read more closely, and found myself with a strong desire to continue the story. The plot, from here on, is actually fairly little—mostly, we cover the emotional ramifications of a loss, and the way people must deal with that—but to be honest, this was the most interesting part. Where Cullen was normal, we begin to see the weird intricacies of his brain, and understand the underlying and undying strange in him that makes him so much more real.

It is because of this fascinating character development and fresh take on dealing with the loss of a loved one that kept the intrigue up, because when Gabriel finally did get back, I'd been expecting it the whole time (I mean, hello, the title is, "Where Things Come Back"), but at that point I was no longer invested in the plot, but more in the emotional arcs.

This brings me to my next point on characters: our theology story. I found it interesting in the beginning because it was so different, but I have to admit, I found it tiring after so long to read about the crazed sacerdotal lust both characters in the third person narrative fell into. And to be honest, their role in the story was predictable at best. No, he wouldn't include a second storyline just to spice things up—I could easily anticipate they played some role in Gabriel's disappearance, and I'd had that bit figured out from the moment I started it.

But was it still rewarding when the estranged plots finally wove together into one nice bow? Yes. It was. Despite being able to predict it, it added the bit of action needed to finish off this purely emotional, semi-depressing story (as Whaley calls it).

Now, onto the other characters. I liked them, but I didn't love them. I sort of felt the same way as I did with Cullen at the beginning, except I didn't feel like they developed and progressed into the introspective and inherently peculiar character Cullen did. Sure, they were enjoyable to read about, with Lucas and Mena's love affair, and their friendship for Cullen being a nice addition, but could I have read the story without them and not felt the lack? It's possible.

This was the reason I wasn't fully against the characters—despite a few flaws, Lucas, Mena, Cullen, and Gabriel pulled together to make an overall interesting story, which is good for such a character-driven book.

I think my ultimate thoughts, though, revolve around that which I'd already touched on. The interesting style and beautiful portrayal of emotion in a way that isn't as washed out as many other books are is what made this worth it for me. The depth of analysis of his emotion, and the rawness of that emotion is the main reason I would recommend this book—it's not a thriller, it's not plot-driven, and it's not particularly intellectual (though it's not dumb in any way); it's a character book; it's an emotional book.

And don't worry—it's not an overwhelmingly negative book: "I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good."

That bout sums up the book for me; both poignant and warm; both dark and light; both sad and happy.

Ratings:
Characters: 80%
Plot: 70%
Depth: 100%
Style: 100%
Intrigue: 80%

Overall Grade: B